Heroics or Finish HoF?

We finally finished clearing all of Mogu'shan Vaults normal by killing Elegon in three pulls, one shotting Will of the Emperor's (way too easy) and got 1 boss down in Heart of Fear before raid time expired. We are on a pretty tight schedule due to only raiding 2 days a week. Should we try clearing all of Heart of Fear on Normal first or should we jump into MSV Heroics next week? Torn on what we should do with our limited time and looking for advice. Thanks guys.

That is completely up to what your guild feels more comfortable with, MSV heroics are yes higher ilvl than HoF reg but you can get tier gear from HoF which in the long term is better than a 6 ilvl boost on gear for fights that are the same difficulty as reg HoF

My guild is in a similar situation but we raid 4 days for 3.5 hours instead of 2 days, and we have failed on Vizier, multiple 3% wipes and 27 overall attempts, and our mage officer who could not make our Monday raid managed to PUG it after raid and downed him. My GM has already decided to try H Stoneguard/Feng/Elegon but I am curious if you think we'd be banging our heads on a wall - the mage said healers being undergeared for Vizier or just not used to the fight may be the issue.

Originally Posted by Motorman

What parts of personal life were dropped to achieve this "world first"? What sleep patterns were used/abused? Did the raiders eat and drink properly during said "progress"? ... These are important questions that should be addressed before we even start "admiring" that world first.

My guild is in a similar situation but we raid 4 days for 3.5 hours instead of 2 days, and we have failed on Vizier, multiple 3% wipes and 27 overall attempts, and our mage officer who could not make our Monday raid managed to PUG it after raid and downed him. My GM has already decided to try H Stoneguard/Feng/Elegon but I am curious if you think we'd be banging our heads on a wall - the mage said healers being undergeared for Vizier or just not used to the fight may be the issue.

We downed Vizier in 9 attempts. Healing wasn't so much of an issue....and none of our Healers are "super geared". More like people had to learn to dodge rings. After everyone managed that, we easily downed him. Make sure you are doubling up your Healing CD's every time you stand under the cones for Force and Verve. Hopefully you guys get it soon!

Edit - Oh and we 3 Healed it and still beat the enrage by a good 20-30sec.

I think very few people in my raid did Atramedes when he was new/relevant, so that could be part of the issue. Any gear from HoF LFR and experience on the fight should help too.

Originally Posted by Motorman

What parts of personal life were dropped to achieve this "world first"? What sleep patterns were used/abused? Did the raiders eat and drink properly during said "progress"? ... These are important questions that should be addressed before we even start "admiring" that world first.

To answer your question directly, working on Blade Lord is definitely your next best option. People agree he's no harder than Vizier. After that though it becomes more of a judgement call based on the strength of your raid.

If your raid feels like they really have the normal mode Stone Guard strat down (especially the tanks), then heroic Stone Guard is probably your next best bet after Blade Lord. Heroic Stone Guard just has a lot more damage on the tanks and things like cobalt mines can one shot dps if they trigger them, other than that it's basically the same as normal from what I remember. Furthermore, it's not a dps check boss at all; if you are lighting up a ton of floor tiles (like you should be) then you can have like 2 dps die and still kill it.

Garalon may or may not be a dps check boss now... I'm not even sure what the current enrage timer is. The main thing on that boss will probably just be learning how to handle it. If you have a monk healer and a rogue on your team, then this boss will probably not be that bad. If you lack cleaves then the dps check might be a little bit harder, and if you lack a mistweaver monk the healers might have a slightly harder time (there's a lot of moving around in this fight, melee running around attacking legs, etc).

Heroic Feng is easier than heroic Stone Guard according to people in the survey and I can't really say they're wrong. He's pretty dang easy as far as heroics go. The only possible tricky part is you need decent AoE to deal with the shadow spirits.

What I imagine my guild is going to do is clear HoF normal first, then if we clear it before the next raid is released we'll start working on MSV Heroic. If the 3rd raid comes out before we clear HoF normal we'll clear the new one first on Normal too and proceed doing heroic in the same order. I feel that we should have already been halfway through heroic in MSV if only we didn't have such a unstable healer setup.

I'd say heart of fear/terrace is the next step, after you clear everything, mogushan should be what you do next... heart of fear has better loot than reg mogushan, has tier, and sha-touched weapons for the very-soon-to-come legendary gems